London Book Fair 2016 - Bukowski Agency · Claire Cameron’s reimagining of Neanderthals is buttressed by recent scientific discoveries. They are no longer seen as a primitive people

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The Last Neanderthal follows the story of the last family of Neanderthals through their final year of life, after a hard winter when their numbers are low. Girl, the oldest daughter, is just coming of age and anticipating mating at the yearly salmon run. Through hunting accidents, animal attacks, old age, and disease, their numbers dwindle until Girl is left alone to care for a foundling named Runt. In their quest to find family, they face starvation in the coming winter storms. Girl has one final chance to stop her people from becoming extinct through continuing to breed. Alternating with Girl’s story is a contemporary drama about a young, pregnant anthropologist who has discovered the bones of Girl. What links these characters over the millennia is their experience of early motherhood, and the extremes to which it can drive young mothers. The novel integrates the relatively new notions that Neanderthals and Homo sapiens co-existed, and that they were a lot more like us than we have been led to believe. When under extreme stress, both women behave in remarkably similar ways. In a tale as harrowing as it is hopeful, Claire Cameron explores the dark, often taboo corners of women’s lives. Her novel includes unprecedented, vivid descriptions of the experience of pregnancy and childbirth. Claire Cameron’s reimagining of Neanderthals is buttressed by recent scientific discoveries. They are no longer seen as a primitive people who lost out to humans, but rather as one of our species, with a brain capacity 10% larger than ours, who managed to survive several hundred thousand years longer than we have so far. Many people have inherited up to 4% of their DNA from Neanderthals.

Praise for Claire Cameron’s bestseller The Bear• Longlisted for the 2014 Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction

“The Bear had me up all night, and when I finally put it down I knew that I wouldn’t forget Anna and her little brother Stick for a long time. Claire Cameron is an absolute master in letting us feel grief and loss by never using those words. The ending is very moving and offers us real consolation at the same time.” — HERMAN KOCH, author of The Dinner

“A tender, terrifying, poignant ride. Hang on.” — OPRAH.COM

“A gripping survival thriller… [an] agonizing odyssey of loss and being lost also has humour. The book’s anguished yet hopeful ending provides a touching terminus for Anna and Stick’s journey to adulthood. This expertly crafted novel could do for camping what Jaws did for swimming.” — PEOPLE

RIGHTS SOLDUS: Little, Brown, January 2017Canada: Doubleday, January 2017Netherlands: Cargo/De Bezige Bij

CLAIRE CAMERON’s first novel was the taut thriller The Line Painter. Her second novel, The Bear, about two small children lost in the bush after their parents are killed by a bear, became a #1 national bestseller in Canada and was sold in eight territories. It was longlisted for the 2014 Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction. Claire’s writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Globe & Mail, The Los Angeles Review of Books and The Rumpus. She is a staff writer at The Millions. She lives in Toronto with her husband and two sons.

THE LAST NEANDERTHALa novel by Claire Cameron80,000 words / Final manuscript due March 2016

A RIVETING DRAMA ABOUT THE PERILS OF MOTHERHOOD AT THE END OF THE NEANDERTHAL ERA — AND IN OUR OWN: THE FIRST BOOK IN A TRILOGY

Photo: Katrina Afonso

See also www.claire-cameron.com

THE BUKOWSKI AGENCY LTD.14 Prince Arthur Avenue, Suite 202Toronto, Ontario M5R 1A9Tel: (416) 928-6728 Fax: (416) 963-9978e-mail: [email protected] www.bukowskiagency.com

IT WAS THE WARMTH THAT GIRL WOULD REMEMBER. The night, the specific one that she often thought about later, the one that turned out to be among the last they had together, had been filled with warmth. Spring was in the night air, though the ground was still hard with frost. Cold nipped at exposed skin.

When they slept, they were the body of the family. That is how they thought of themselves together, as one body that lived and breathed. The forms curled into each other in a tangle, the curve of a belly rested up against the small of a back, a leg draped over a hip and a cold set of toes found heat in the crook of an arm.

As the sun turned its face away, they were all exhausted from the work that came with spring. For once, there had been no nighttime stories, talk, and laughs — though when they had all settled, Him, the oldest brother, issued a tremendous fart. It sounded like it could have split a log with the force. Runt replied with a messy blow of his lips to the back of his hand. Bent laughed, just once and Girl let a smile curl to her lips but was too tired for more. Big Mother said, “Hum.”

And then it was quiet in the hut, heavy breathing, slow.Deep in the middle of the pile of bodies lay Girl. She usually slept soundly through the

first sleep — when they woke for a few hours and the bodies got up to pee, drink water, talk or play in some way, and then went back to bed — but that night she woke too early and stretched out her cramped arm. Under her hand was the warmth of Wildcat. Big Mother had shooed him away to the edge of the nest. The sneaky cat had waited and crawled in once he heard Big Mother was asleep. It wasn’t hard for any of them to tell when she nodded off. They only had to listen for the even whistle of the air in her big nose.

Wildcat was grey with pointed black tips on his ears. He was a forest wildcat, which looks much like a modern domestic cat but larger, more robust and with a thicker matt of fur. A set of black rings ran up the length of his tail. He made a single chirp, a sound he had trained Girl to know, and moved in to cuddle up to her. He rubbed his head and ears against hers. She made a faint chirp back. They were good friends and Wildcat was the softest thing she knew.

Girl scratched at a flea that was attempting an escape from her armpit. She ran her sleepy fingers across the skin to try and flick it off. A shift and a slight grunt and she couldn’t reach. A moment later a thick finger pressed on her back. It skimmed across the blade and pushed. It was her brother Him, she knew from the feel of the rough skin on the tip of his finger. A pinch and a pop and the bug body crushed between his teeth. Girl didn’t say thank you. There was no need. It was built into all the times Him had picked a flea or louse from her skin in his sleep. Each night she would do the same for Him. Words could be empty. For them, it was the return of a gesture that held meaning.

And then it was quiet. Girl sighed and fell back and became part of the tangle of bodies again. The protective layer of bone and muscle blurred. The edges of their bodies melted to the warmth until they joined.

THE LAST NEANDERTHAL AN EXCERPT

RIGHTS SOLDCanada: Knopf, February 2017

A RETURN TO THE TERRITORY OF MONKEY BEACH — THE DARK AND WACKY AGONY OF ABORIGINAL ADOLESCENTS

Son of a Trickster combines aboriginal belief systems and severely dysfunctional family dynamics with fantasy, horror, and edgy, mordant humour in an unorthodox coming-of-age story. One of seventeen-year-old Jared Martin’s grandmothers insists that he is the son of Wee’git the Trickster, that dangerous shape-shifter who looks innocent but wreaks havoc. His other grandmother insists that “If you weren’t your dad’s and your momma tried to pass you off as his, I’d have slit her throat and left her in a ditch to die like a dog.” Jared’s far-northern west-coast Native community is closing in on him: his mom’s psycho ex-boyfriend, Death Threat, tries to kill him; Jared is beaten senseless for his weed, essential to the cookie business with which he supports his father, who plays him for all he is worth; his mom takes up with a biker who moves in along with his pit bull, Baby Killer. “The world is hard. You have to be harder.” That’s Jared’s mother’s favorite saying. When he starts seeing strange apparitions, at first he thinks it has to be the weed that is causing them. But Jared is about to find out some hard truths about himself and his family: these supernatural creatures are hell-bent on revenge against him. The world is hard. Now Jared has to be harder.

Praise for Eden Robinson’s Monkey Beach“Eden Robinson has written a great book. Tough, tender, and fierce. Monkey Beach is a valuable addition to North American literature.” — SHERMAN ALEXIE

“Beautifully written and haunting, this is an impressive debut.” — THE TIMES, UK

“Monkey Beach is far more than a novel of psychological transformation, though it is that. It is, in the best sense, a thriller, a spiritual mystery…. The novel also contains some of the truest passages I have read on what it is like to be a teenager…. Puberty has rarely received such a perceptive and unflinching gaze. You can tell Monkey Beach is an original because you actually want to read it again…. A startlingly accomplished first novel.” — THE WASHINGTON POST

“Although death hangs like a Pacific mist over these pages, Robinson, herself a Haisla, fills this edifying book with the stuff of the living, from the tiniest details of Haisla life to the mightiest universals of tradition, desire and family love.” — THE LOS ANGELES TIMES

“Robinson’s paean to the Pacific Northwest and Haisla culture, embodied in her stout-hearted hero and all her other vital and complex characters, does what good literature does best: It moves meaningfully from the particular to the universal and back again. And Robinson performs this enlightening feat with genuine insight, wry humor and translucent lyricism.” — THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE

“Robinson has created a convincing, well-written work, filled with the sadness of a disappearing way of life and a family’s grief.” — THE SEATTLE TIMES

Haisla/Heiltsuk novelist EDEN ROBINSON is the author of a collection of short stories called Traplines, and two previous novels, Monkey Beach (now in its 21st printing in paperback) and Blood Sports.

Photo: Mark Raynes Roberts

SON OF A TRICKSTERa novel by Eden Robinson86,000 words / Manuscript available March 2016


HIS TINY, TIGHTLY PERMED MATERNAL GRANDMOTHER Anita Moody had never liked him. As far back as Jared could remember, she’d watched him suspiciously with her clear, black eyes. She never let him come more than an arm’s length near her, making him sit on the ratty blue couch while she sat in the kitchen of her small house near the Bella Bella Band Store. Once, when she was chatting with someone, she stopped when she noticed him, tensing as if she expected him to go haywire.

“Wee’git,” she’d say if his parent’s left them alone. “If you hurt her, I will kill you and bury you where no one can resurrect you. Get, you dirty dog’s arse.”

“I’m Jared,” he’d said.“Trickster,” she’d said. “You still smell like lightning.”She was a cuddly grandma with his cousins, sitting them at the kitchen table and giving

them popcorn balls, homemade fudge and caramel apples. She knitted mittens with their names embroidered on the back. The last birthday present she’d given him was a jar of blood with little animal teeth rolling around the bottom.

“Fucking cuntosaurus,” his mom had said, snatching it from him. “She doesn’t believe me, does she? No faith. None.”

“Jared, buddy, this isn’t about you,” his dad had said.“She doesn’t like me,” Jared said.“She doesn’t mean it,” his dad said.His mother spat. “Sonny boy, it’s got nothing to do with you and everything to do with

what a fuck-up she thinks I am.”“She’d never hurt you,” his dad said.“Because I will fuck her up one side and down the other if she lays a single finger on

you,” his mom said. “I will fuck her up good.”When Jared was almost five, his mother decided they should move, so his dad found

work at Eurocan, a pulp and paper mill in a town called Kitimat. His mom showed it to him on the map, tracing his finger on the ferry route they were going to take up the inside passage. They packed up their townhouse in one weekend, forfeiting their damage deposit because of their late notice. As they were loading the last boxes late in the evening, his grandmother came and stood in front of the moving truck. Jared ducked behind his mother.

“Don’t,” his dad said, grabbing her arm. “Maggie. Think.”His mom jerked her arm away. His dad lifted Jared and propped him on his hip. His mom

got into the driver’s side. She revved the engine. His grandmother stared at his mother, waiting.“Maggie,” his dad said. “Momma,” Jared said. His mom turned the engine off. She got out and stood nose to nose with her mother.

His dad slid behind the wheel.“I’ve lost all patience with you, old woman. Don’t push me.”“Be careful,” his grandmother said. “You know what he did to me. That isn’t your son.

It’s the damn trickster. He’s wearing a human face but he’s not human.”

SON OF A TRICKSTER AN EXCERPT

RIGHTS SOLDUS: Delacorte, September 2016Canada: Doubleday, September 2016UK: Orion, September 2016Germany: Blanvalet/PenhaligonUS Audio: Random House

• A New York Times Bestselling Series• From the winner of the Crime Writers’ Association Debut

Dagger Award, Barry Award, Agatha Award, Macavity Award, Dilys Winn Award, and Arthur Ellis Award

• Over three million copies of the series sold worldwide

Flavia returns from Canada to Buckshaw, only to find that her father is in hospital and forbidden visitors, and her dastardly sisters are shunning her. Then she discovers the corpse of a village woodsman in Bishop’s Lacey crucified upside down on a door.

The novel playfully satirizes (without mentioning them or their authors by name) all the old children’s books based on real children — books that subsequently ruined their lives — from A.A. Milne to Alice in Wonderland to Peter Pan. One such child exacts revenge (thus the dead body in question). The book includes a bevy of eccentric characters — some of whom have changed their identities in order to hide away — as well as a number of false leads and annoyances, such as Flavia’s interfering cousin Undine, all of which necessitate Flavia’s many excursions to London and elsewhere, often on her trusty bike Gladys. By the end she has of course solved the crime, but soon after suffers a heartbreaking personal tragedy.

Praise for Flavia de Luce Mystery #7: As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust“Just when I think I’ve had enough of young Flavia de Luce and her quaint English gardens and her poisonous potions, Alan Bradley turns her around and makes her new again… This one is great fun.” — THE GLOBE AND MAIL

“A charming jumble of clues, false trails and surprises, all narrated in Flavia’s droll, amusing voice.” — CRITICSATLARGE.CA

“Eleven-year-old Flavia de Luce, perhaps contemporary crime fiction’s most original character – to say she is Pippi Longstocking with a Ph.D. in chemistry (speciality: poisons) barely begins to describe her – is finally coming home.” — MACLEAN’S

“Another treat for readers of all ages.” — BOOKLIST

“Bradley’s exceptional seventh series whodunit… Through it all, [Flavia’s] morbid narrative voice continues to charm.” — PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, starred review

ALAN BRADLEY is the internationally bestselling author of short stories, children’s stories, newspaper columns, and the memoir The Shoebox Bible. The Flavia de Luce mystery series has been sold in 39 territories and has sold more than 3 million copies worldwide. The books have been bestsellers in Canada, the USA, Germany, Russia, Brazil, China, and Holland, appearing on bestseller lists in The New York Times — where the first two books appeared simultaneously — and Der Spiegel — for four months.

THRICE THE BRINDED CAT HATH MEW’DFlavia de Luce Mystery #8 by Alan Bradley75,000 words / Edited manuscript available March 2016

Photo: Jeff Bassett

See also www.alanbradleyauthor.com


THE WINTER RAIN SLASHES AT MY FACE like icy razor blades, but I don’t care. I dig my chin deep into the collar of my mackintosh, put my head down, and push on against the buffeting of the furious wind.

I am cycling madly towards the village of Bishop’s Lacey, fleeing hordes of Hell’s hobgoblins.

The past twenty-four hours have been a nightmare. All I can think about is getting away from Buckshaw.

Gladys’s wheels groan horribly beneath us. The biting cold has penetrated her steel bones, and seized the tendons of her brake cables. She judders wickedly on the slick tarmac, threatening to skid off the road entirely and pitch me into the icy ditch.

I want to scream into the wind, but I don’t. One of us, at least, must keep her wits about her.

I try to put my thoughts in order.In spite of having been banished to Canada and then re-banished back home from Miss

Bodycote’s Female Academy — in what may or may not have been double disgrace — I have to admit that I had been looking forward to being reunited with my family: Father; my two elder sisters, Feely and Daffy; our cook and housekeeper, Mrs Mullet, and most of all, Dogger, Father’s general factotum and all-round right-hand man.

As every traveller does on an Atlantic crossing, I had daydreamed about my return to England. Father, Feely and Daffy would be at the docks to greet me, of course, and perhaps even Aunt Felicity would put in an appearance. ‘Welcome Home Flavia’ banners would be waved; a few discreet balloons, and all that sort of thing. Discreet of course, because, like myself, none of us de Luces wear our hearts on our sleeves.

But when the ship berthed finally at Southampton, there had been only Dogger standing motionless in the rain beneath a dark umbrella.

With the strangeness that comes of separation, I had offered him my hand, rather than giving him the crushing bear hug that was in my heart. I regretted this at once, but it was too late: the moment had passed and the opportunity was wasted.

‘I’m afraid I must be the bearer of rather bad news, Miss Flavia,’ Dogger had said. ‘Colonel de Luce has been taken ill. He is in hospital with pneumonia.’

‘Father? In hospital? In Hinley?’‘I’m afraid so.’‘We must go to him at once,’ I said. ‘What time will we be there?’We still had a long journey ahead of us, Dogger explained. The 5:20 boat train from

Southampton would take us up to London and to Waterloo Station, where, just after 7:00 in the evening, we would have to change to a taxicab for a dash across the city to another train at another station.

We would not reach Doddingsley until late in the evening, and would not arrive at Bishop’s Lacey, Hinley, and the hospital until even later. By then, visiting hours would be long over.

‘Surely, Doctor Darby —’ I said.

THRICE THE BRINDED CAT HATH MEW’D AN EXCERPT

“Rich, dense and syntactically serpentine, The Motorcyclist resists consumption in large doses…. Clarke’s linguistic introversions, his endless wordplay, might thwart our usual reading pace, but this also seems part of the point: In a book, and a world, where the sexual is the political, where shades of skin are shades of meaning, and where the motorcycle season is the de facto mating season, it’s not a bad thing to slow down and take your time.” — THE GLOBE AND MAIL

“Dazzling… This ribald, raw, road-movie of a novel is an object lesson in how to combine the political with the personal.” — QUILL AND QUIRE STARRED FEATURE REVIEW

“A captivating work.” — THE OTTAWA CITIZEN

“The novel is subtly subversive in the sense of how it capably fleshes out not just a black man, but a man who happens to be black, a vital cultural distinction that lends the novel an air of uncompromising universality…. The story shines a light on how much class defines us, nearly as much as race does.” — THE NATIONAL POST

“Black is easily one of the most compelling, dynamic and conflicting characters in recent Canadian fiction…. The result is a work which is both visceral and thoughtful, harrowing and insightful, cruel and tender…. With The Motorcyclist, Clarke has rendered not just an entire world, but also an entire man, flawed and unforgettable.” — THE TORONTO STAR

“The characters and situations pop off the page: Clarke’s imagery is always hot and tactile, in line with his protagonist’s desire to touch — and hold and ravish — almost every aspect of his environment. Set in Nova Scotia at the end of the 1950s, The Motorcyclist sketches the East Coast as a network of highways connecting burgeoning cities and static small towns, all traversed by Carl Black on his trusty BMW bike. Like his contemporary, Jack Kerouac — one of dozens of authors name-checked in Clarke’s text — Carl has a yen to be on the road, but he exists in a different, if contemporaneous, context to the beats; he’s a blue-collar black man in a city situated atop a racial fault line nearly as fragile and volatile as the ones buried somewhere in the south.

“The Motorcyclist is scathing: Carl has to shift between personas depending on what kind of white person he’s interacting with at any given moment. This discomfort creates a context for his rather rapacious pursuit of white women, whose sexual attentions he frames as a kind of victory…. This disturbing fervour is communicated through a literary style that’s at once plangent and trickily sophisticated.” — excerpted from the review by Adam Nayman in Quill and Quire

Photo: Camelia Linta

RIGHTS SOLDCanada: HarperCollins,

February 2016

A NATIONAL BESTSELLER ABOUT ONE MAN’S STRUGGLE TO ESCAPE CONVENTION AND ACHIEVE HIS DREAMS

Librettist, novelist, playwright, poet, screenwriter, and scholar, GEORGE ELLIOTT CLARKE won the Governor-General’s Award for Poetry in 2001 (for Execution Poems). In 2004 he received the Martin Luther King Jr. Achievement Award. In 2005 his work attracted the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Fellowship Prize. In 2005-6 he published his first novel, George and Rue, in the US, UK, and Canada. He has taught at Duke, Harvard, and McGill universities, and currently teaches at University of Toronto. He has just completed a term as Poet Laureate of Toronto and is now Canada’s parliamentary poet laureate.

THE MOTORCYCLISTa novel by George Elliott Clarke70,000 words, with photos / Finished books now available


CARL THRUSTS BACK BEDCLOTHES — a bristling surf — and leaps up, ascendant, urgent to start motorcycling afresh: to get from Easter to Christmas, astraddle. He dabs Brylcreem on his Negro curls; he slaps Snap on his hands, to scour off even invisible grit. Quick, he sheathes himself in black leather chic, from boots to jacket. The boots are so polished that sunlight, enmeshed in that dark dazzle, mirrors a solar eclipse. He’s had the toggery ready weeks now. He picks up his black helmet that he’s painted so edgily, flames fringing the face area. Apollo Negro, he audits his flash in a full-length mirror, then strides — no, struts — out the door, awaiting, expecting, plaudits. Practically jogs to the Halifax Motorcycle Shoppe. Motorcycle man is slick; just sharp style — like Lee Van Cleef, only more coppery, less devious, in look. Rough trade, he could be, forwarding such svelte, sporty black, a blackness that radiates — he posits — both immaculate macho and charismatic charity.

***9 a.m.: Punctual, pale, reedy, spectacled, jet-haired Corkum enters the backroom and flicks on the lights. He whooshes open the front door to his sable-leather patron; exchange of hands. Bamming a screen door, Corkum leads Carl through the shop and out back. Primed to go is “Liz II,” as Carl has named his motorcycle, out of fealty to the Queen. An act of sweet, beatnik Irony.

Carl doth got royalist predilections: He likes Nat King Cole, just for the middle name of the crooner. He’s no jazz fan, but lauds the monikers of Duke Ellington and Count Basie. Why not? His natty aunt Pretty, the worldwide-famed contralto, has scored the hat trick of serenading Edward VIII (thus becoming the only Canuck and only Negro to have an audience with the ephemeral monarch), then George VI (though he coughed throughout her performance, due to his royal prerogative of lung cancer), and, most recently, Queen Liz II herself, whose tiara boogie-woogied when she heard Pretty’s show-stopping aria as Carmen.)

The bike’s fresh polish is transparent silver. Liz II blazes; Carl beams. Offset by chrome parts and black rubber tires and grips, her purple shade flares gloriously, shaming the dull light of morn. Carl walks her down the driveway — like a groom takin his bride down the aisle. Boy oh boy, he thinks as he straddles the bike. Mine — and does it ever feel good to be back on her.

So pertinent is the machine to his being, his bearing, his antipathy for Ennui and Ignorance, that he’s told some friends that he got to Bavaria, personally, to oversee the final tinkering in the crafting of this motorcycle. Carl don’t care that he’s turned to German engineering to realize Excellence at a time when the propaganda adjective jerry-built supposes poor construction. His purchase flouts Prejudice; his profile, astride the machine and gliding black leather and purple metal, through Halifax streets must give whites-only segregationists serious heart attacks. Or so he grins to himself, imagining such a scene.

Liz II gleams gorgeous, in that violet paint and loud, spanking chrome. The Big Marvellous Wonder (BMW) boasts huge black fenders, with C.A.B. — Carl’s initials — flagged atop the front fender. No mistaking that she’s his. Like Aladdin rubbing the genie-laden lamp, Carl will hand-scour Liz II until her sheen slashes every stray eye.

THE MOTORCYCLIST AN EXCERPT

RIGHTS SOLDCanada: Penguin, May 2016India: Penguin

THE HOUSE OF WIVESa novel by Simon Choa-Johnston92,000 words / Final page proofs now available

TWO WOMEN COMPETE FOR THE AFFECTIONS OF THEIR OPIUM-MERCHANT HUSBAND IN A TALE OF FRIENDSHIP, FORTUNE AND RIVALRY IN COLONIAL HONG KONG

In 1862, a young Jew from Calcutta named Emanuel Belilios leaves his dutiful wife Semah and sets sail for Hong Kong to make his fortune in the opium trade. There he grows into a prosperous and respectable merchant, eventually falling in love with his Chinese business partner’s daughter Pearl, a delicate beauty twenty years his junior. As a wedding present, he builds for her the most magnificent mansion in Hong Kong. Then Semah arrives unannounced from Calcutta to take her place as mistress of the house. Inspired by the lives of Choa-Johnston’s ancestors, The House of Wives is an unforgettable novel about the machinations of the early opium trade, and about two remarkable women determined to secure a dynasty for their children in the tumultuous British Crown Colony, where the interests of the Near East and the Far East would clash for years to come.

Praise for Simon Choa-Johnston’s The House of Wives“Simon Johnston has written a rollicking great novel that kept me turning the pages so fast they almost burst into flames. With a powerful and lush sense of place, this story of love, opium, and an exotic city will leave its mark on you as it did on me. Sublime storytelling.” — Terry Fallis, author of No Relation and Poles Apart

“The achievement of this epic novel is that it will not leave you alone — it will call to you (even in the night) to return to its colourful, daring and sometimes outrageous characters and to keep up with them until they are ready to let you go. What a feat of artistry and storytelling!” — JOSEPH KERTES, author of Winter Tulips and Gratitude

“In this richly imagined tale, Simon Choa-Johnston fleshes out the bones of his exotic ancestry and gives it the theatrical sweep of opera – engrossing.” — PLUM JOHNSON, Charles Taylor Prize-winning author of They Left Us Everything

Born and raised in Hong Kong, SIMON CHOA-JOHNSTON came to Canada to attend McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, and graduated in 1972, after which he went to New York for postgraduate theatre studies. He has worked in Canadian theatre for over twenty-five years as an Artistic Director, Director (over 200 productions), and Playwright. He was awarded the Governor General’s Canada 125 Medal, has been nominated for the prestigious W.O. Mitchell Literary Prize, and was inducted into McMaster University’s Alumni Gallery. Simon spent twelve years as the Artistic & Executive Director of the Gateway Theatre in Richmond, B.C., from 2000 – 2012.

Simon Choa-Johnston’s ancestral home, Kingsclere, circa 1880, on what is now known as Kennedy Terrace, Hong Kong. Today only the foundations remain.

Photo: David Cooper

See also www.simonjohnston.com


A FIVE-YEAR-OLD’S ENCOUNTER WITH THE DEVIL is different from a grown-up’s. If the confrontation is serious enough, the child will lock it in her mind’s eye forever. The grown-up will bolt, run as fast as he can, scale mountains if needed, to put as much distance as he can between himself and the fiend.

Such was the case for the child riding on her father’s back. He was a thin, wiry Hakka. She wondered if the three-inch gash on the side of his head still hurt. It had scabbed over but was still puffy. Her arms wound tightly around his neck. Her legs wrapped around his waist. And her face was buried between his shoulder blades. The child had walked as far as her little legs would carry her. She knew she was a good girl — her father had told her so. She hadn’t cried even though she was hungry. Fearing detection, they had slept during the day away from the hill paths. At night they had walked south towards the river. She knew the direction because that is what her father had told her. After two sunrises (when they had finished the sweet rolls he had stuffed in his pockets) he had picked her up and carried her on his back. After a long time — she couldn’t tell how many days it was — they had reached their destination. She had held on tighter as he waded across the river. There was not a star to be seen. He had told her that behind them was China. In front, only another day’s walk was the city of Heung Gong — Hong Kong, the British colony. There they would be safe and the devil could not harm them.

In her tiny world, the little girl was certain about two things. First, she could hear her father’s heart beating through his back against her ear. This gave her a sense of security. And second, she could feel the piece of jade in her pocket. She took it out. It felt cold in her palm. The stone was flat and oval shaped somewhat larger than a quail’s egg and smaller than a hen’s. It reminded her of what had happened only days before that had caused them to flee their home.

It was like most market days. They were in the village not far from their small patch of farm. Her parents had set up their weekly stall — a table with a cloth over it that reached to the ground. The little girl loved to hide under the table where she could spend all day playing with a straw horse her mother had made for her. From that womblike privacy she could peek through the folds of the tablecloth and see the wide world without being seen, hear without being heard. Her father sold vegetables and her mother took in sewing — that was what the cloth was for, to show samples of her stitching that she did by hand. Her mother was a small woman with a round face just like the little girl’s. And they both had high cheekbones that were red with health. This made her mother appear younger than her twenty-two years because the red bandanna she always wore framed her lively almond-shaped eyes. Around her smooth neck was a matching scarf that was also self-made. These accessories made her mother the butt of jealous barbs from some who lived in this village of hard-working farmers and their wives. But the little girl didn’t care. She knew that her mother was someone special, someone she would like to be when she grew up and became a farmer’s wife herself.

THE HOUSE OF WIVES AN EXCERPT

A doctor brews a potion from the dartura flower with the aim of poisoning soldiers in the French garrison in Saigon. Based on the real-life Hanoi Poisoning Plot of 1908, this novel tells a story that crosses the landscape of Vietnam when the doctor is forced to flee. The characters include a fish-girl pulled from the Mekong River — in a superstition-rich land, this is an omen; a poet with one green eye; a rich revolutionary who detests his inheritance money, and a pregnant wife who keeps a menagerie of pigeons, cats, and a boa constrictor.

The stories in this novel are Yasuko Thanh’s family’s stories. For political reasons, her grandfather was forced into hiding for two years during the Japanese occupation of Vietnam, after which time her grandmother and father set out to search for him. Falling somewhere between Kiran Desai’s Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard, Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome, and The End of the Alphabet by C.S. Richardson, the novel promises a poetic, fantastic, darkly comic look at the cost of insurrection as well as the complications of falling in love at a time when historical conditions complicate it.

“Deft touches of magical realism lend this story of love, obligation, and sabotage the mysterious aura referenced in the title.” — PUBLISHERS WEEKLY STARRED REVIEW

“Mysterious Fragrance of the Yellow Mountains will carry you away with the startling clarity of it language — you will almost forget you are reading at all. Until, that is, you are drawn up short by the uncanny sense that this book is not really about the past at all… that it is instead directly addressing you, the reader.” — JOHANNA SKIBSRUD, Scotiabank Giller Prize-winning author of The Sentimentalists

“Sweeping yet intimate, Mysterious Fragrance of the Yellow Mountains is a novel in which not a single, haunting detail is trivial, and a devastating edginess straddles what is intoxicating, astonishing, and at once ancient and contemporary. Yasuko Thanh has rendered a richly imagined narrative of five men plotting, drinking, dreaming of poison against the fascinating backdrop of colonialism and revolution, where ghosts, superstition, love, and insanity seethe. This is a book to be savoured, thought about, and discussed — a book to be remembered.” — ALEXANDRA CURRY, author of The Courtesan

“The universal legacies of colonialism: guilt, revenge, violence, ghosts. Yasuko Thanh captures Viet Nam’s historical intrigues in story-telling that is compelling, vivid, tragic, passionate.” — KIM ECHLIN, author of The Disappeared

Photo: Anastasia Andrews

RIGHTS SOLDCanada: Hamish Hamilton/Penguin,

April 2016Romania: Editura RAO

YASUKO THANH’s story collection Floating Like the Dead was published by McClelland & Stewart in 2012 and was shortlisted for the Danuta Gleed Award and the BC Book Prize for Fiction. One story in it won an Arthur Ellis Award for Best Crime Short Story. The title story was the Journey Prize winner for the best story published in Canada in 2009. Quill and Quire named Floating Like the Dead a best book of the year. CBC hailed Yasuko Thanh one of 10 writers to watch in 2013.

MYSTERIOUS FRAGRANCE OF THE YELLOW MOUNTAINSa novel by Yasuko Thanh70,500 words / Final page proofs now available

AN HISTORICAL NOVEL SET IN FRENCH INDOCHINA

See also www.yasukothanh.com


IF YOU FAIL TO BURY A BODY, if the body dies away from home and is not honoured with the proper rituals of mourning, if the body dies unloved while hurrying on its way to an exam, or without its head, in the middle of a field, lonely, if it dies in the street, lost, if it dies a violent death, if it dies with a bamboo pole on its neck, the shoulder calloused from heavy work, if it dies alone, it will become a wandering ghost.

In 1908 the French rule Cochinchina. The pro-independence movement is scattered and unorganized. In the south, an army trains not to fight, but to become invisible; the general is working on a potion that will make them vanish in front of the eyes of the French.

In a hundred years, one will be able to board a plane to Ho Chi Minh City and pay a woman with small feet and waist-length hair a few dong for a body massage, to be rendered and received naked in a room that smells of coconut oil.

Today there are only a small number of English and German merchants living in the colony. They sometimes dine with French Navy officers, and discuss the politics of Italian missionaries proselytizing in the area.

The French chop off the heads of Vietnamese nationalists or expel them to South American jungle camps. They display the heads in the market place; flies skulk on the eyes, nostrils, mouths, seeking moisture. Ghosts roost in banyan trees because if they descend, angry shopkeepers shoo them away with brooms.

In the North, swooping over the country as if we are a bird, one spies a bay full of pirates near the Gulf of Tonkin and fishermen’s houses clinging to the shore. Knee-deep in water, women work in the fenced-off plot of a rice paddy. On the other side of the hill, a Tonkinese coal mine and a small cattle farm shelter a group of houses where pottery-makers and brick-makers live.

Now our bird floats to the Central Highlands where Cham tribe members wander, wearing head caps decorated with polished pebbles. A woman swings a coloured shawl around her shoulders and watches a man bag a rhinoceros with a stick made of sharpened bamboo. He amazes the woman, who bellows a song in his honour. When their child, who has tired himself scurrying through the underbrush all day, has finally gone to sleep on a woven floor, moveable so it can be elevated when the river water rises, they smoke marijuana from their pipe and the scent rises into the Giant Kapok trees like a perfume. Then they make love.

Now our bird sees the Moys, another prehistoric tribe that live in bamboo houses with thatched roofs and stilts near the river. Descended from Hindu kings, they wind in procession through the fire trees, sucking regally on their marijuana pipes. The men wear loin cloths, arrows in bags slung on their backs, and the women stroll around with squares of fabric that barely cover their breasts, and both men and women pierce their ears. Their toes are spread wide from years of walking barefoot.

MYSTERIOUS FRAGRANCE OF THE YELLOW MOUNTAINS AN EXCERPT

“Alix Hawley has really done a number on an American folk hero. With vivid imagery and a strong, dreamlike voice, she confidently strips away the myth of Daniel Boone to reveal the strange, pulsing man underneath. It is a remarkable feat and a remarkable book.” — TRACY CHEVALIER, author of Last Runaway and Girl with a Pearl Earring

“A book of great sympathy and sadness. Hawley’s intimate version of Daniel Boone is a wonderful character, intelligent and self-aware, even if he can’t stop himself from being himself.” — THE WALRUS

“Hawley masterfully creates both a dreamlike world and a fearful fantasy. We get to know her Boone intimately, the narrowness of his childhood existence, the idealization of his dead brother, Israel, whom Boone strives his entire life to emulate, and the trauma caused by the loss of his son. The unremitting cruelty and turbulence of the 18th-century frontier environment is palpable. The country is vast, but the deep, almost suffocating forest, where death can lurk behind any tree, keeps one from seeing clearly, and friend or foe can appear or disappear in an instant. … The book’s magic, however, is in Hawley’s treatment of Boone’s inner life. All True Not a Lie in It, published, appropriately, under Knopf Canada’s New Face of Fiction imprint, may come closer to disclosing the “real” Daniel Boone than those who originally manufactured and perpetuated his myth.” — QUILL & QUIRE, starred review

“Atmospheric and beautifully written… The story retains an insistent allure.” — TORONTO STAR

“Hawley’s skills are impressive indeed. In her hands, Boone comes to life in a way that even long-time aficionados will find surprising and affecting…. If Boone doesn’t come across here as the larger-than-life hero he is usually depicted as being, this is nonetheless mythmaking, though of a different sort. Hawley’s Boone is a hero for these times, and All True Not a Lie in It is a powerful reminder of the fact behind the legend, of how fiction can arrive at fundamental, troubling human truths. The manner in which the book ends, with less than half of Boone’s life behind him, at a critical juncture and point of inestimable suspense leaves one almost breathless for the sequel, which Hawley is apparently currently writing. It can’t come soon enough.” — VANCOUVER SUN

“Hawley’s ability to convey the menace of paradise is overwhelming, as well as her ability to make the reader share in the sorrows of her hero.” — NATIONAL POST

ALIX HAWLEY [D.Phil., M. St. (Oxford), M.A. (East Anglia), B.A. Hons. (UBC)] studied English Literature and Creative Writing at Oxford University, the University of East Anglia, and the University of British Columbia. She published a story collection, The Old Familiar, with Thistledown Press in 2008. One of her stories was a runner-up in the 2012 CBC Canada Writes competition. She resides in Kelowna, British Columbia, with her husband and two children.

RIGHTS SOLDUS: Ecco, August 2016Canada: Knopf, March 2015

ALL TRUE NOT A LIE IN ITa novel by Alix Hawley90,000 words / Finished books now available

Photo: Courtesy of the author

• Winner of the Amazon.ca First Novel Award• Longlisted for the Giller Prize

HAWLEY DOES FOR ICONIC AMERICAN PIONEER DANIEL BOONE WHAT HILARY MANTEL DID FOR CROMWELL AND PETER CAREY DID FOR NED KELLY

See also www.alixhawley.com


HOW YOU SCALP SOMEONE IS LIKE THIS. Cut a small round down to the bone beneath the hair on top of the head near the front. Put your foot on the back of the person to be scalped, pull the hair at the edge of the hole. The whole skin comes free easy enough, easier than skinning a deer.

Jamesie my son you once asked me how and I refused to say at that time but I do not see why I should keep it from you any longer, now you are dead. If you are listening. But perhaps you cannot hear me, perhaps you do not wish to.

In the bad times in the Yadkin Valley we found two children with scabbed patches of bone on the tops of their heads, left to sicken or starve after their parents and houses were burned and their hair was taken. Some can survive it. I saw a man done at the Monongahela River. He did not I believe, but I do not know.

Some other children were taken captive. I do not forget that. So many people shifting about, bought and sold and traded, this country is full of their tracks.

I have wondered too about the sound of the skin surrendering itself up and how the head left behind must feel. I have seen the hair dangling from the dried skins stretched on hoops in Indian villages. And black Indian hair turned in by English scalpers for Governor’s money.

No scalps here where I now am. None that I have seen. It is a quiet place at this time. The snow makes things quiet and still.

I could do it if I had to as I know. For a time I would have done it hour after hour and day after day had I only had the opportunity. The slave Adam told of the terrible things he heard despite having stuffed his fingers down his ears. I did the same at night for months.

James asking for help. For Daddy. For death.Now I can hear it, I can hear it, his poor voice thickened and without words at the last.

The echo of it spreading out across the night country, shivering like wind over water or over the grasses of Kentucky. For ever. The father, which is to say I, only two miles away, did not hear.

My brother Squire told me the bodies were left in garbled ruins but not scalped. They do not take white scalps in peacetime.

I force my breath into a rough laugh. I chop at a tree. Pale chips fly back at me, let them blind and choke me. Someone speaks to me in a friendly way but I am tired to the bone and I do not understand or wish to. I am not alive.

For a time I used to try to picture the murderer’s face but it has fallen away like a mask leaving behind black nothing. I used to ask him in my mind what point there is in killing boys for sport, without a fair fight. What point there is in killing a boy you know to speak to, but a boy you know nothing of otherwise. Aside from the fact that he did not like to smoke. And that he was my boy.

I now let bears get too near before I shoot. I let deer get too far away.If I were really to see the face, what is there that I might do? I have thought of every

burning and ripping and carving up that there can be. There is nothing else. I can think of nothing. I can think of him no more. And Jamesie is hidden also, I cannot see him. I did not see him dead, I did not go back for him with the burying party.

ALL TRUE NOT A LIE IN IT AN EXCERPT

“The Measure of Darkness seems, at first, to be about the mysterious odyssey and follies of a man with a rare neurological syndrome in which the victim cannot perceive half of the world, and worse, doesn’t know he can’t perceive it. Yet, as Liam Durcan’s acutely observed, powerfully poetic prose — which can be sensitive or steely — builds to a gut-wrenching finale, we realize that this man is a metaphor for each of us and we are all haunted by the things we don’t know we don’t know.” — NORMAN DOIDGE, M.D., author of The Brain That Changes Itself and The Brain’s Way of Healing

“An intriguing and layered medical mystery.” — QUILL & QUIRE

“[A] spare, ethereal novel… A deft exploration of the heart and mind that offers the pathos of a Sam Shepard play nested within the unreliable storytelling of Christopher Nolan’s Memento.” — KIRKUS REVIEWS

An accident leaves architect Martin Fallon brain-injured with a disorder called “neglect” — he can’t appreciate half his visual world, and is unaware of his deficits. He tries to maintain control of his personal and professional life but the disorder, with the limited insight it brings, wreaks havoc. It is also a metaphor for the types of blindness he experiences in other aspects of his life. At the centre of the novel is a mystery: why was Martin parked on a rural road in a snowstorm when he was hit by a snow plow? By the time he gets to the bottom of the mystery, he has reached a fateful decision about his life. Ranging from Moscow to New England, from Montreal to Detroit and rural Quebec, The Measure of Darkness is most importantly a journey into the vagaries of the human brain.

Praise for Liam Durcan’s first novel, García’s Heart“[An] audacious literary debut… The author’s shrewd, intricate debut reveals a multitalented artist. A fascinating construct.” — KIRKUS REVIEWS

“Liam Durcan has firmly ensconced himself within the hallowed ranks of doctors making successful forays into literature, a line running straight from Chekhov through William Carlos Williams and W. Somerset Maugham.” — QUILL & QUIRE, starred review

“Durcan’s outstanding debut novel walks… a taut line between skillful thriller and philosophical novel of ideas. [H]e already writes with an ease reminiscent of Graham Greene. Durcan crafts a character whose background in neurology and medicine — Durcan is himself a neurologist — deftly informs the action… As the plot unfolds, the novel takes on a breathtaking immediacy that will awe readers.” — LIBRARY JOURNAL

“What prompts an honorable man to commit unspeakable acts? That’s one of many moral conundrums considered in Durcan’s compelling debut… Durcan renders satisfyingly complex characters in sharp, vivid prose. García’s Heart beats with a riveting blend of science and suspense, perfect for fans of David Baldacci.” — BOOKLIST, starred review

RIGHTS SOLDNorth America: Bellevue Literary

Press, March 2016

LIAM DURCAN published his first novel, Garcia’s Heart, in 2007. Previously he released a story collection, A Short Journey by Car, in 2004. He is former neurologist-in-chief of the Montreal Neurological Hospital, where he continued to practice, and current Assistant Professor of Neurology at McGill University.

THE MEASURE OF DARKNESSa novel by Liam Durcan70,000 words / Finished books now available

Photo: Redstone Photography

See also www.liamdurcan-words.com


CONCENTRATE ON THE LINEAR. THE LINEAR IS ALL YOU HAVE.Dr. Feingold had said it weeks ago. It was after a session — their last session, as it

turned out — when she came to visit him, sneaking up on him in that way he suspected was at least partially deliberate. She sat down in a chair in the corner of the room. Martin listened to the deliberateness of a body’s weight being placed into one of those institutional chairs. The grudging rebuttal of the chair. He remembered searching for her, his focus rummaging through the shadows and joists of sunlight, until suddenly she was there.

“It’s dark in here,” he said, trying to position himself so that she would sit still in his field of vision.

“The lighting is fine, Martin.”They spoke for a while, like they always did, in a way that managed to flatter and

perplex him at the same time. She was intelligent. And attractive, he thought, although this impression came from nothing more than her voice, the therapeutic deliberateness in pronunciation, the change in pitch at the end of a sentence, which he suspected was professionally calculated, an allowance for him to say more than he initially wanted. Her voice reining him in and then giving him room.

His vision clutched at a sliver of reflected light that marked a looped earring. From there, he found an earlobe, then the tight ringlets of her hair. A long march toward Dr. Meredith Feingold began, the angle of her jaw that fed the chin and from there the French curve of her lower lip, followed from its fullness to where it tapered into a point. Trying to understand her eyes was a different matter; he was forever chasing something in the eyes that confused him, that made him arrive back at a starting point. Instead, he’d found himself focused on detached physical facts. The sound of her breathing. Blink rate. Vital signs. But it went beyond this; he was most drawn to the little wall of flesh that made up the arch of her nostril. While it was a nondescript region of only a couple of square centimeters, he’d recently been given to thinking about it quite incessantly, wondering whether this territory of Feingold had ever been pierced with a small metal stud when she was in university or kissed or even considered in passing by those who held her dear, if this beautiful structure had ever been subjected to the type of scrutiny that he’d given it — he viewed this as a sign that heralded recovery, because for the first time he could imagine Feingold in the past, as having a past, or as a person outside of her professional duties. A trail of her, the wake of a personality. These imaginings seemed to explain her better than her features, which, despite his obsessively cataloging them every time he saw her, could not be combined into anything resembling a recognizable face.

He looked forward to seeing her every day after physio- and occupational therapy. But other than his fractures, which were healing and were none of her concern anyway, he felt fine and couldn’t understand why she was so interested in his case. During their first visits, he was under the impression that she had been sent to help him deal with the aftermath of the accident, but he soon discovered, to his relief, that Dr. Feingold had no interest in talking about the psychic injuries the crash had inflicted. As for his memories of the accident itself, he had been wiped clean.

THE MEASURE OF DARKNESS AN EXCERPT

“A moving portrait of the human spirit — fierce, lovely, and indomitable as nature.” — PEOPLE magazine Book of the Week

“Lori Lansens has created a heart-pounder of a book that is every bit as much of an emotional roller-coaster as an adventurous one. Filled with richly drawn characters, unexpected twists, and gritty details about survival, you’ll want to read this right now. Unless, that is, you happen to be camping!” — JODI PICOULT, bestselling author of Leaving Time

“Four hikers get lost on a mountain, struggling desperately to stay alive, and it’s all as chilling and gorgeous and full of suspense as a cracking line of ice on a frozen lake. A breathtaking look at how the past footholds the future and how even the bleakest terror can find its way to unfathomable beauty.” — CAROLINE LEAVITT, New York Times bestselling author of Is This Tomorrow and Pictures of You

“By its closing pages, it gains an almost devastating emotional force that accompanies the irresistible quality of its narrative drive: It’s a master class in fiction and its potential.” — THE GLOBE AND MAIL, Toronto

“As in her earlier novels, Lansens (The Wife’s Tale, 2010) portrays strong, not-soon forgotten characters in this suspenseful, psychologically rich tale…. Lansens brings the reader intimately into their plight: four harrowing days with barely any food or water, trapped in a canyon with seemingly no way down. Their ordeal profoundly affects the four survivors and changes the course of each of their lives.” — BOOKLIST

“Lansens has written a colorful, adventurous wilderness survival novel… [a] first-rate character-driven thriller.” — PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

“Her newest offering is more than just a survival tale. It is a story of friendship and loss, but also of growth and hope, and of family bonds that can either tie us down or help us soar. A great read for anyone who likes character-driven, coming-of-age stories with exquisitely described natural settings.” — LIBRARY JOURNAL

Photo: Laura Starks

RIGHTS SOLDUS: Simon & Schuster, June 2015US Large Print: Center PointCanada: Knopf, April 2015UK: Simon and Schuster, May 2015Brazil (Portuguese): Bertrand EditoraFrench ex-Canada: DenoelFrench Canada: AltoIsrael: Keter BooksNetherlands: The House of BooksNorway: Juritzen Forlag

THE MOUNTAIN STORYa novel by Lori Lansens94,000 words / Finished books now available

LORI LANSENS was a successful screenwriter before she burst onto the literary scene in 2002 with her first novel Rush Home Road. Published in eleven countries, Rush Home Road received rave reviews around the world. Her follow-up novel The Girls was an international success as well. Rights were sold in 13 territories and it featured as a book club pick by Richard & Judy in the UK, selling 300,000 copies. Her third novel The Wife’s Tale is in development as a film. Born and raised in Chatham, Ontario, Lori Lansens now makes her home in Los Angeles with her husband and two children.

• A Library Journal Best Book of 2015• A Buzzfeed book you won’t be able to put down

FOUR PEOPLE GET LOST ON A MOUNTAIN FOR FIVE DAYS, AND ONLY THREE COME BACK ALIVE

See also www.lorilansens.com


THE MOUNTAIN STORY AN EXCERPT

DEAR DANIEL,A person has to have lived a little to appreciate a survival story. Isn’t that what I’ve always said? I promised that when I thought you were old enough to hear it, I’d tell you mine. It’s no tale for a child, but you’re hardly a child anymore. Still, it’s hard to know when a son’s ready for the truth about his old man.

You’re older now than I was when I got lost with three strangers in the mountain wilderness. Five days in the freezing cold without adequate food or water or shelter. You know that part, and you know that not everyone survived. What happened up there changed my life. The story will change yours.

The night of your middle school graduation was the first time I almost told you what really happened; then it was your fourteenth birthday, and fifteenth, and every birthday after. You begged to hear it, and you deserved to be told, but it was never that simple, Danny. To understand about the mountain, you have to know what came before.

Remember last spring when we were visiting colleges? We were on that dark gravel road just outside of Bloomington and I nearly hit the deer. I was so shaken I had to pull off at a truck stop. You tried to comfort me, pointing out that the deer wasn’t injured, and even if there had been a collision it wouldn’t have been my fault. I was going to tell you then. I had the perfect opening. But I didn’t. I couldn’t.

I was the one who wasn’t ready to face the truth, and I realized I was never going to be ready to tell you how I managed to survive — not face to face. I’d edit, censor, lie, anything to avoid seeing your pain. But there’s no point in telling half a story, is there? Or worse, one that’s mostly fiction.

So I wrote it down. I typed the whole thing out as it came to my fingers because that felt like the most honest thing to do. As for the timing? With you starting at Indiana State? When you get older you’ll see that there isn’t so much a good time or bad time for things, appearances to the contrary. There is just a time.

The day I got lost with those three women — that fateful November day — was my first trip up the mountain in exactly one year. I’ll confess to you, that on that cool, grey afternoon of my eighteenth birthday, I was going to hike to a spot called Angel’s Peak to jump to my death.

No one else knows that part of the story. When you were a little boy you’d study me in quiet moments and ask if I was thinking

about the mountain. I almost always was. You asked if I ever dreamed about it. I did. Still do — especially now. Sometimes I wake up in a panic. Sometimes I wake missing old friends.

My fellow hikers have been with me, in one way or another, since we were lost together all those years ago, walking alongside me when I’m out with the dogs, quiet when I’m reading in bed, guiding me with whispers when I can’t find my way. This is their story too. I’ve felt them looking over my shoulder, insisting on full disclosure. I’ve been grateful for the haunting.

Your mother? She’s always said she didn’t need to know all the gory details. She’s been just fine in the dark. Still, we both knew this day would come, and once you’re finished reading, she’ll have to read it too. I’m afraid I’ve caged the truth for so long it’ll die in the wild. Your mother wishes it already had.

Here it is, with love from a father to his son — the mountain story.

Dad

THE BUKOWSKI AGENCY LTD.14 Prince Arthur Avenue, Suite 202, Toronto, Ontario M5R 1A9Tel: (416) 928-6728 Fax: (416) 963-9978

For a complete backlist, please visit www.bukowskiagency.com

Denise Bukowski, Principal AgentStacy Small, Contracts and Rights Manager

Production: PageWave Graphics Inc.

“The Measure of Darkness seems, at first, to be about the mysterious odyssey and

follies of a man with a rare neurological syndrome in which the victim cannot perceive half of the world, and worse,

doesn’t know he can’t perceive it. Yet, as Liam Durcan’s acutely observed, powerfully

poetic prose—which can be sensitive or steely—builds to a gut-wrenching finale, we realize that this man is a metaphor for each of us and we are all haunted by the things

we don’t know we don’t know.”

— NORMAN DOIDGE, M.D., author of The Brain That Changes Itself and The Brain’s Way of Healing

Documents

London Book Fair 2016 - Bukowski Agency · Claire Cameron’s reimagining of Neanderthals is buttressed by recent scientific discoveries. They are no longer seen as a primitive people